![]() ![]() One of the most well known productions, which still continues today under the NCAAA, is the Black Nativity. These troops often featured previous students of the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts. The NCAAA created touring companies of dance, music, and theater which performed across the country and even went to the Caribbean, Senegal, Brazil, and Europe to showcase their art and culture. ![]() Together, her institutions created a thriving community for Black artists from around the world to learn and prosper. In 1968, after the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts had been open for eighteen years, Miss Lewis founded the National Center for Afro-American Artists, also known as the NCAAA, which partnered with her School of the Fine Arts. After running for 40 years, the school, its educational activities to all ages, and its program with Norfolk Correctional Facility closed due to a fire. ![]() She was able to have incredible teachers, from choreographers like Talley Beatty, to musicians like African percussionist M. At the beginning there were only 25 students, but this number soon grew to 400 students by the time the school moved to 122 Elm Hill Avenue. This new school housed a ballet studio, art studio, and a piano studio in a six room apartment and she helped to provide an arts education in dance, music, and theater to local youth. Her father gave her three hundred dollars, bought her twelve second-hand folding chairs, and two second-hand pianos to pursue her dream. In 1950, she took a leap of faith and started the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts at 7 Waumbeck Street in Roxbury. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Emerson College in 1943, and received a Masters in Education from Boston University in 1944. Her own myriad racist experiences led her to devote her life ensuring Black communities had the opportunity to explore and express their history and culture through the arts. ![]() She listened to stories about how her father was laughed at for wanting a job as a clerk and how her brother struggled with finding a hospital willing to work with Black doctors. She was born in 1921 in Boston and felt the negative effects of a racist society.Īt three years old, she attended meetings of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League after church with her family, who were followers of Marcus Garvey’s ideas. Elma Lewis was the daughter of Barbadian immigrants Edwardine and Clairmont Lewis. ![]()
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